False Promises and Hidden Hopes
by Nikitabasia
Summary: Every time Harry has thoughts about revenge and hate, thoughts of emerald green eyes and messy black hair stop him. Tom learns that life is full of lies and broken promises and vows to himself that he'll never fall for the lie that is love.


**Even if I wanted it to be, Harry Potter will never be mine and will always belong to God, aka, J.K. Rowling.**

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Harry giggled from the floor as a man with dark, untameable hair made bubbles full of colours float around his head while a women with emerald green eyes, the same as Harry's, full of love, warmth and laughter looked on.

_Tom sat in his crib watching as the old lady walked out of the room, leaving the new little boy to cry because he wanted his "mama" and that he was hungry. He would learn soon that crying didn't help. _

Harry awoke in his cupboard from a dream of bright red hair to the sound of the other boy wailing and the stick-lady cooing. Harry knew they liked the other boy better and couldn't help but wonder what he did wrong. "Don't ask questions," they said, "your parents were good for nothing," they said. He didn't believe them. He knew his parents had loved him.

_Tom awoke to the sound of the old lady yelling at the older boys to make their beds. He wished that, if there were really people like in the picture books who hugged children and cared about them, he could live with them. _

Harry ran from Dudley and his gang. Harry was yelled at by his teacher for something Dudley did. Harry was shoved into a cupboard with no food because he did better at school than Dudley did. He wondered why he still tried to become part of a family, if love was really worth that much effort, if maybe his parents really hadn't loved him and his aunt and uncle had been telling the truth. But whenever he came close to having those thoughts emerald green eyes and dark messy hair would distract him.

_Tom thought he was smart for a 5 year old. Better than all the other children. So when a potential Mother and Father came looking to adopt, he knew this was his chance to be loved. He was special. When they spoke to him they loved him, but he wanted to make sure. He took them outside, showed them how special he really was, so they would never leave him, so that he could be loved forever. He picked up a flower bud and used all the feelings of hope and the want for love to make it open. But they didn't shower him with love like he thought they would. They screamed and ran. Tom realised that day, as he vowed never to cry again, that love and hope was useless. _

Harry's eyes, though still emerald green, did not have the same glow of life that they used to. They were cold, sharp and cautious, holding only a shred of the innocence they once had, they were not eyes of a 7 year old child. The word Freak was burned into his mind. It was what he was told he was. He was different he knew, so why shouldn't he want to hurt his so-called family? Give up on the concept of love he'd been holding onto. But every time he saw someone who had the love he didn't have, with a smile on their face and an air of joy around them, a small ray of hope and warmth would flash through his eyes, accompanied by thoughts of red hair and colourful bubbles, and he would look back up into his aunt's scowling face and the words _because you're better than them _would dance though his mind, washing away all thoughts hate and pain. Because Harry knew that one day he would get to know love too.

_The others teased him, hurt him. Starved him. Hated him. He was the Freak. He could do things. Things the others couldn't. But he could make them hurt too, make them scream, and it was the most beautiful thing. Because they could never make him scream. They couldn't hold the same level of cold hate he had for them. Because when Tom learnt to do something, he would always be the best. _Because you're was better than them, _Tom would think when he watched them twitch at his feet. When they screamed Tom felt like it was the world's way of apologising for the broken promise of love and happiness, and the unfairness of life. He made his own promise that he would only ever rely on himself. He knew he could only trust himself. _

Harry sat in his cupboard, knees to his chest, yet again wondering how he had managed to turn his teacher's hair blue. He had learnt over the years to stay hidden, to do his relatives' bidding without question. He had stopped referring to them as family. Because they weren't. They hated him. And he, he hated them. What had he done to them? Nothing but serve as their slave, he thought, as the air grew heavy and crackled around him in his anger. _That _feeling made him feel safe, like nothing could ever touch him. So what if he had to use his hate to accomplish it? It's not like anyone else was going to help him. _Nobody_ cared. They hid behind their mask of kind smiles while their eyes showed their disinterest with anything but themselves or theirs. They spoke of evils in the world. Of greed, murder, rape, stealing. Those were all immoral things to Harry, but not evil. Evil, to Harry, was the promise that they cared, that things would get better, that people would _help. _Harry had come to realise in the years of trying to pass endless amounts of time in his lonely cupboard by fantasying of a life where he had a family, his thoughts were ridiculous, naïve, childish hopes. A part of Harry still doubted his relatives when they told him his parents died _drunk _and left him. But he couldn't help in resenting them slightly. But, he was nothing like the Dursleys. He would not act on his hate. One day, he promised himself, he would walk away. He would walk away and never come back. And he would help other children, and make sure the promise of love and hope wasn't broken in their lives. He wouldn't wear masks and tell lies. Harry squashed the little voice in the back of his head telling him that he could get revenge with his freakish powers, make his relatives hurt too. Make others hurt. Get compensation for all the lies and broken promises of love. But the voice was getting louder over the years, muffling thoughts of the red-haired lady, and it was hard for him not to give in.

_Tom sat under a tree in the barren yard with a book on psychology in his lap. Over the years the others had learnt to stay away from the Freak, especially after the cave incident. Sometimes he still wondered what it would be like if he had never learnt to use his powers like this, kept them for petty little acts like making a flower bloom. He would be a weak, naïve, little door mat. Cowering before the pathetic beings which were humans. He liked to think of himself as something better than human. Not restricted by feeble emotions and the morals drawn up by society. He would not conform to normality, no, he would rise and become the best. He used his powers for himself. He used them with purpose. Tom would achieve that which had never been done before, and he would do it himself. Because if the people in life had taught him one thing, it was that you had to do things yourself, help only existed in stories. _

Harry had been close to giving in. Listening to the voice. The past years had not been good to Harry. Slowly the dreams which filled him with warmth and kept him anchored had been replaced with a scream, a flash of green light and a cold laugh. Sometimes he felt as if it was the universe laughing at him in his weak, _pathetic _state. He had been telling himself for months to just let go of all his hopes, that they were nothing more than dreams to keep that shard of innocence he still had. That waiting it out would do nothing, and it wasn't like giving into the hate could be a bad thing, he was a Freak after all, and Freaks could not have love. But every time he watched the Durselys turn their noses up at a homeless person, or complain about cancer patients taking up their news time, he couldn't help but pity them. Because even though he didn't think he quite understood the concept of it, he knew a loving person would not limit it to just themselves and their families. And even though he told himself to look out only for himself, he couldn't help but think that even if he had to live like this forever, he would do so to get a man off the streets, or a child one last wish before they died. He would give up his hopes for somebody else, and that, he felt, was something the Dursleys would never understand.

_"__Hogwarts is a school of Magic." He was a wizard. He _knew_ he was different. Special. And he would be in this new world too. He would rise, and nobody would ever hurt him again. He would go down in History, and nobody would ever forget him. He would be change to the corrupt world and people would worship him. He would leave behind the weak little boy called Tom Riddle and do things nobody had ever done. He would be the greatest wizard to ever walk the earth. _

"Yer a wizard Harry." Magic. It was real. He wasn't a freak. He _knew_ there had to be something else. He squashed the voice once and for all. Because if magic was really there, was with him, then he could find anything. And then he was told his parents had died for him. And the dream made sense. And he felt it. But it wasn't like the feeling he got when he was mad. No, it was so much _more_. It was endless, what he imagined a hug to be like, the feelings he got when he read childhood stories, it tasted like freedom and made stars look mundane but most importantly it was colourful bubbles, black hair and emerald green eyes. And for the first time in his memory, Harry laughed. Because _of course _his parents loved him, _of course _hope existed and _of course _he knew what love was.

As the Killing curse met Harry's Expelliarmus Harry wondered if the man in front of him was what he would have become had he given in to the voice. And he couldn't help but understand how a powerful child's want for revenge would escalate into insanity with nobody to help them deal with the false promises that came with life. Because as much as he loath to admit it, their childhoods had been rather similar, the only difference being that Harry had had a year of love to remember and to dull the need for revenge during his suffering.

_Voldemort looked into the boys eye's and couldn't help but remember little Tom Riddle's hopes for the world, for himself. Where had he gone wrong? He was supposed to become great, not a shadow of the brilliant child he once was. He didn't even notice when the killing curse hit him in the chest. _


End file.
